Saturday, June 21, 2014

NAIROBI, 20 June 2014 (IRIN) - As Kenya continues to round up and detain refugees,
migrants and asylum-seekers in a controversial anti-terrorism
operation, fears are mounting over the fate of around 300 children
separated from parents arrested during the sweeps. Some of these
children are reported to be held in a Nairobi stadium used as a
temporary detention facility, without a parent or guardian.

“Our concern is the separation of some 300 children, including babies as
young as a few months, from their mothers and fathers or customary
care-givers and foster parents,” said Emanuel Nyabera, UN Refugee Agency
(UNHCR) spokesman in Kenya.

Since early April, some 4,000 arrests have been made in Operation
Usalama Watch, mostly of Somali nationals, but also Kenyans of Somali
origin as well as nationals of other countries such as Democratic
Republic of Congo. Around 2,000 of those arrested have been transferred
to the country’s two refugee complexes. Some 359 have been deported to
Somalia.

“During visits to temporary foster families in the urban areas, UNHCR
and partners found some of these children in a desperate situation,”
Nyabera said.

He added: “We urge the government to take steps to facilitate the
reunification of the children with their families. In order to prevent
further family separations of refugees and asylum-seeking children's
rights, the responsible authorities are encouraged to work with UNHCR
and its partners in ensuring that the ongoing operation is implemented
in a child-friendly manner, which fully respects the dignity and rights
of each child.”

UNHCR and other agencies grouped under the child protection working
group of the urban refugee cluster have called on the government to
“among other things, protect separated children from heightened risk of
sexual and gender-based violence, exploitation or disappearances and to
sensitize law enforcement officers charged with implementing the
encampment directive and Usalama Watch on the need to avoid further
separation of families.”

Victor Nyamori, a program officer at HIAS, a charity working with urban
refugees, told IRIN that “the number of separated children could be
higher” than 300, adding that “the available figure only represents what
has been reported to aid agencies.”

According to Gemma Davies, a researcher at Amnesty International,
separation without putting in place adequate protection measures amounts
to a violation of rights and leaves children susceptible to abuse.

“Children have been subject to protection risks as a result of
separation, and their education and health have been affected. Camps do
not have the resources or capacity to give these children the level of
care they are used to have been receiving, and pose further protection
risks,” Davies told IRIN.

“Children have been detained with their mothers, and this is completely
unacceptable given conditions of detention, health and protection
risks,” Davies said.

She noted the need for security agencies to determine the family status
of adults before detaining them or sending them to camps.

“Necessary arrangements should be made in the best interest of the
child. Preferably this should mean that at least one parent can continue
to take care of them, and that they can continue to access education
and health services at a minimum,” she said.

Kenya’s most senior refugee official conceded that 300 children had been separated during Operation Usalama Watch.

“We will ensure that those children that we can trace are reunited with
their parents. But at times this separation happens simply because
people want sympathy,” Commissioner for Refugee Affairs Harun Komen told
IRIN.

HIAS’ Nyamori said his organization had information “from community
health workers that the police might be holding some unaccompanied
children” at a police station close to Kasarani stadium.

Andrew Maina, Assistant Programme Officer at the Refugee Consortium of
Kenya (RCK), an advocacy NGO, told IRIN that “RCK is seriously
considering legal action [against a government directive to send all
urban refugees to camps] on the issue of children's rights to family
unity and access to education.”

Noting that some separated children had been taken in by friends and
neighbours, UNHCR’s Nyabera warned that “the ability of the temporary
foster families to provide adequate protection and care for these
vulnerable separated children will significantly reduce should the
separations continue for a longer period of time.”

Mother-of-six Halima’s one-bedroom flat in the Nairobi district of
Eastliegh – the epicentre of Usalama Watch – is also now home to the
three children of her arrested business partner. She is unsure where
their mother is now.

She “was arrested and when I went to Kasarani to see her, I was told she
had been taken to Dadaab [a refugee complex some 500 kilometres
northeast of the capital]. I don’t know whether it is true but that is
what the police said. Now I have to look after them but like any other
children, they need their mother. It is sad because she had documents
allowing her to live here,” Halima said.

A government children’s officer told IRIN that she and colleagues had
been denied access to the stadium to visit minors that might be being
held there.

“I’m a government official yet I have been refused access to children
inside Kasarani. There are children there without parents because they
lost track of them in the course of the operation and we need to see
them,” she said, asking not to be identified by name.

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